Tiktok executives are getting nervous as a bill that could make the Chinese app unavailable in the United States heads to the House of Representatives.
The prospective legislation was fully supported by House Speaker Mike Johnson after advancing out of a bipartisan committee with a unanimous 50-0 vote.
The bill would require TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to fully divest all of its applications within 180 days or risk a ban on those apps. It would also establish a process for the executive branch to ban applications in the future if they are deemed a security risk.
The bill was authored by Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chairs the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
It was crafted with consultation and assistance from President Biden's administration and is currently boasting strong bipartisan support.
TikTok and ByteDance have sounded the alarm to the app's user base, claiming that the proposed legislation would be an attack on free speech.
"This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs," TikTok said in a statement reacting to the bill.
TikTok users also received a special message from the app's team urging them to contact local lawmakers and "speak up now — before your government strips 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression."
Gallagher has pointed to the campaign and the flood of calls pouring into some congressional offices as evidence of TikTok's harmful influence.
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"Today, it’s about our bill, and it’s about intimidating members considering that bill, but tomorrow it could be misinformation or lies about an election, about a war, about any number of things," Gallagher said.
He added, "This is why we can’t take a chance on having a dominant news platform in America controlled or owned by a company that is behold to the Chinese Communist Party, our foremost adversary."
